Volumes have been written on France’s North African population and their integration (or lack thereof) into French society. In the broader scope, the story of Aulnay will be a footnote, but for the workers whom Citroen recruited directly in the early 1970’s, building cars is all they have known since they left the Maghreb.

The North African workers were recruited for the age-old reason that continually draws economic immigrants looking for a better life; the natives consider themselves above such labor. Citroen, which owned the factory at the time, wanted to avoid hiring native French workers, which they felt were tainted by Marxist views on labor relations. One Arab worker delivered an invective that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Rush Limbaugh program, stating

In what would be emblematic of the social problems that exist in contemporary France, Citroen and other automakers domiciled the new immigrants in bleak, high-rise projects, like Cite des 3000, where “…80 percent of the dads work for PSA.” Aulnay and Cite des 3000 was one of the sites of the infamous 2005 riots in Paris, where North African youths clashed violently with police.

Unionization at Aulnay was generally sympathetic to PSA, which kept a tight lid on the CGT, a radical Marxist organization that takes a hard-line adversarial approach to management. The CGT was generally credited with improving working conditions at the plant, but still represents only 40 percent of the workforce.

The CGT, for all its outdated views, can’t shoulder the blame entirely. French President Francois Hollande made reference to PSA’s “strategic choices which have not been good” – Peugeot is lacking in the small cars that once made them great, while Citroen is no longer making the DS, just premium small cars that bear those two letters, with none of the groundbreaking looks or technology that gave the original DS such prestige.

Everything in the middle – precisely what PSA builds – is being decimated, while the low and high end segments are thriving. And rival automaker Renault is having a field day with their low cost Dacia brand. Dacia vehicles, like the Duster SUV and Lodgy minivan are winning critical and commercial acclaim everywhere from India to England – Renault has slashed their British lineup dramatically, leaving only the Renaultsport performance cars and a couple other models, to make room for the bargain-priced Dacias.

And in a twist of poetic justice, the Dacias, which some French observers have cited as a threat to the domestic car industry, are being built in North Africa, by the former countrymen of the first generation Aulnay workers, for a fraction of the wages that Renault would pay to a French worker. The 1,800 euro a month salary is by no means a fortune, but it is a ticket to a middle class life, decent housing and the benefits of the French welfare state. For an ethnic minority in a country where one’s best hope is a middling civil service job, working in a car factory is a highly coveted position, which makes the prospect of an African assembly base, capable of exporting 85 percent of its 400,000 unit capacity, even more threatening.

While CGT leaders and even former President Nicolas Sarkozy have come out against the African plants, there’s no escaping that the low cost cars are the right product at the right time; current economic conditions make car purchases particularly unappealing, and if one can purchase a vehicle as good as a Scenic or Kangoo for a fraction of the cost, then why not? Of course, the Lodgy and Duster can only be priced this way because the 250 euro a month salary makes the cars unaffordable for the Moroccan workers that build them. Unfortunately, it’s looking more and more like the French system that enabled the cradle-to-grave package that came with building cars is equally out of reach.

Recommended

8 Comments on “Decades After Bringing Workers To France, Jobs Go Back To Africa While France’s Promise Disappears...”

When the Paris riots were in full swing a reporter asked one of the African youths what they were doing in France. To which he responded:
“We are now here because during my grandparent’s time, the French were over there”
Meaning of course, the French colonies in Africa.

Imagine telling a Brit 25 years ago that India would today own Jaguar and Land Rover.

Just did a roadtrip through Morocco last year and it’s clear that it’s a country on an upswing economically. It’s where Mexico was back in the days of the maquiladoras – at least until the West goes to yet some cheaper place of manufacture.

I don’t normally like social or political commentary on a car site. I generally feel that most commenters sound intelligent until their political leanings rear their ugly heads. This seems to be an exception. Perhaps because it’s the French with problems and not us.

For whatever reason the article seemed intelligent and well written. Good job Derek.

When Henry Ford was building his great assembly plants, he not only paid about twice the going rate for labor, he knew that for every worker he needed he would have to hire several times the amount, since most of the workers would quit in the first few months. The Americans of the early 20th century were apparently also “spoiled”.

Here’s another possibility. Humans like to work. We like to work with our hands. What really brings pleasure though, is seeing our work come together, seeing what we started completed, and feeling the contentment of craftsmanship. It’s why Ford’s assembly line workers hated their work, and why so many modern office workers are also dissatisfied; so often they don’t have the pleasure of building things, seeing them from start to completion. They are just cogs in a machine.

Only immigrants were willing to take Henry Ford up on his offer(including internal immigrants from the American South) and put up with grinding, monotonous work, absent the pleasure of craftsmanship, for hour after hour. They did so because they were desperate. The French manufacturers, in that flowering time of the late 1960s, couldn’t convince French workers to do so, so rather then figure out how to make the work more enticing, they turned to those who were desperate enough. Now, thanks to globalization, they don’t even have to bring the desperate to their neighborhood.

I don’t know how to fix this. Obviously, robotics has dealt with some of the monotony, while also eliminating jobs. Obviously, modern industrialization relies on soulless repetitive work. But, just like with the bland rabbit hutches that were built to house them, these workers knew that there was something wrong with this way of life. The radical unions, the flirting with destruction politics, the riots and tension, they rise out of this fundamental thing. The work wasn’t satisfying, and life with it.

The UAW gave some Bubba/Sissy the opportunity to live a middle class life. Send the kids to college, buy a boat, go on a nice vacation middle class. Just my observations; not wanting to debate the UAW, that’s worthy of several columns. Plus some really nice discounts on their rides.

Well written article, but there’s a minor mistake – only the Lodgy is built in Morocco, the Duster is built in Romania, by workers paid 500 euros a month. Double than what the Moroccans get, but still low enough to make these cars low priced.